The saga of a student and a salamander

One of Wednesday’s big Statehouse newsmakers was neither a governor nor a grizzled legislator nor a handsomely compensated lobbyist.

She was Ilah Hickman, a White Pine Elementary School sixth-grader who wowed the House State Affairs Committee with her case for designating the Idaho giant salamander the state’s amphibian. The committee printed Ilah’s proposal, which means it should get a full hearing.

No matter. Ilah has studied up. As she told lawmakers, the giant salamander in question lives almost exclusively in Idaho and its skin looks like the topography of the Bitterroot mountain range. She has also done the kind of nose-counting that would make a caucus chairperson proud; she told the committee that her proposal has the backing of 26 of her 32 classmates (she said she caught the naysayers at a bad time, polling them while they were doing homework).

I wrote that a salamander bill seemed “a wee bit frivolous” at the time, seeing as it came the same week that legislators were busily whacking $128 million from Gov. Butch Otter’s budgets.

“If ever there was a time for a no-nonsense, all-hands-on-deck legislative focus, this is it,” I wrote at the time. “The salamanders can wait.”

The Twitter backlash was swift, albeit good-humored, and I was asked what I had against salamanders — or kids.

Nothing, really. And writing about education in Idaho is, ultimately, about writing about that life-defining adventure in which young people learn about the world they will inherit from us. Ilah seems well on her way.

Davlin said it best in a tweet after the State Affairs hearing. “Do you know what I was doing in sixth grade? Not getting legislation printed.”

Same here. And I wasn’t blogging when I was in sixth grade, either. Which is probably for the best.

And lastly, let’s say this for Ilah. She did actually get a bill printed Wednesday. The governor, the legislators or the lobbyists noodling over the personal property tax repeal can’t say that.